When John Butcher died on Friday, July 29, after battling Covid-19, he was calm.
“As calm as he could be,” his daughter Rowena Higginson told The Star.
John contracted the virus on the Monday, and by Thursday, his lungs had been severely attacked, breathing was difficult and he was highly medicated.
Miscommunications and misunderstandings meant Rowena and her family were not able to see him until Thursday, missing precious days with him.
By Friday morning, he had died in his bed at Addington Gardens rest home, aged 88.
“My sister missed seeing him by an hour because we weren’t aware that we were able to visit,” she said. Her sister, Cherie, lives in the Bay of Islands.
“I think it was a very sad end for my father, because he was a wonderful person.”
John was born on Anzac Day in 1934.
“He had a long, colourful . . . and a happy life,” Rowena said.
“He was old-school because he was born just before the break of World War 2, so his father was a return serviceman from the Great War and . . . his older brother went to the second world war.”
Rowena accompanied him a few times in recent years.
Raised in St Albans, he enjoyed helping in his family’s corner shop during the war.
After spending his high school years, from 1947-1951, at Christchurch Boys’ High School, John left to join the National Air Corporation in 1952 at 17-years-old.
In 1978, NAC became Air New Zealand. John trained as a pilot at first, but was unable to finish his finals due to illness.
Instead, he moved into reservations and “stayed there for 46 years so he must have loved his job”.
“He was incredibly loyal to the corporation and, in return, he enjoyed the leisure of travelling overseas and doing lots of amazing work within the company,” Rowena said.
John travelled extensively around the world during his early career, and was a very talented tour guide for various groups he took around places in Australia, New Zealand and further overseas.
His job also allowed his family to travel, including to Sydney for their first family holiday in the 1960s.
“Because dad worked for Air New Zealand and my grandparents lived at the top of the North Island, we went away every school holidays and long weekends.
“We were always able to go into the captains’ cabin and the air hostesses used to let me take the lollies round, and they all knew dad . . . I think it was the time in the corporation where it was more a family.”
John’s highlight of the year was Melbourne Cup week and Cup Week in Canterbury, to which he also took tours groups to.
Rowena said her father was also a very talented musician and he played violin in the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra as a young student.
Though he was never able to realise his dream of playing guitar in a modern band.
He loved and excelled at fishing and gardening as well, and played squash socially.
From the late 1940s, early 50s, John also danced – right up until Covid hit.
“I used to dance with him in the home,” Rowena said.
John fell sick about a decade ago, developing Parkinson’s disease, then Lewy Body which is a form of dementia.
John went into Burwood Hospital for respite care during the first lockdown. From there, he went into dementia care at Addington Gardens.
The first day they were able to visit him, it was very emotional.
“They take you into a room and they sit with you, and they brought our father in and he sat opposite to us,” she said, gesturing a length of about three metres.
“That first day was very difficult and very emotional because we couldn’t give him a hug. He didn’t understand what was going on, he wanted to leave with us.”
She appreciated what they had to do to keep everyone safe, but seeing her father like that was incredibly difficult.
“You’re now seeing your parent in a rest home facility, in a locked facility as well because it’s dementia . . . and you’ve never been in there before and you’re kind of trying to work out why he’s here, and does he need to be here, he’s got this room and where’s his stuff,” Rowena said.
The frequent changes to Covid-19 restrictions proved a difficult time for Rowena family as rules for visitation would change suddenly.
About six months ago, John was moved into the hospital part of the rest home.
Lengthening gaps between the short visits lead to him becoming quite unwell, Rowena said, and his verbal ability diminished rapidly.
He was one of the last people to catch Covid in the rest home, she believed.
On his last birthday, the Anzac Day past, the rest home was in lockdown again, so his family recorded The Last Post on Rowena’s phone, and made poppies and a big card with all of the grandchildren’s pictures.
“They gave us permission to go to his room and stand outside the window . . . they wheeled him up to the window, and the window in the top of my father’s room opened about [half a metre] . . . we’re talking through this gap and saying happy birthday, and he was sort of looking up very vaguely at me . . . he never forgot who we were,” she said.
“We played The Last Post through the window on my phone and he started tapping with his hand . . . it was really so lovely.”
She said it was “heartbreaking” as it was the third birthday he had been locked down away from them.
Rowena and her family were not able to honour their Māori traditions as John’s body was cremated shortly after he died.
However, family still came from all around New Zealand to kōrero; to talk, and to sing and dance.
“Those kind of wonderful things,” she said.
“But it has been very different for us because we haven’t had our tūpāpaku [the deceased] with us.”
To honour her father, they put together large cards which were read out at the gathering, each a different era of his life, so his descendants could know who he was.
John was the father of Rowena and Cherie, grandfather of Rochelle, Beau, Josh, Kipa, and James, and great-grandfather of Ayla, Shaydis, Aroha, Stacy, Leslie, Eli, Tia, Bailey-Rae and Reo-Taritanga.
There are now a total of 1705 deaths in New Zealand that are confirmed as attributable to Covid-19.
